Do Freedom of expression and Refugees originating go together across countries?

Across 166 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.20, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.47.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 1990-2024, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is -0.126 (172 countries, 5,571 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is -0.049.

Does Freedom of expression cause Refugees originating?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Freedom of expression vs. Refugees originating

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 166 countries, Freedom of expression and Refugees originating rise and fall together at r = -0.20 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = -0.14, q = 0.014, allowing for the many pairs tested).

Comparing countries across the middle half of refugees originating, 2.27 to 150 per 100,000 people, freedom of expression is worse by 0.00317 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.00233 points.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.198p = 0.011 · 166 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.145p = 0.063 · likely range [-0.29, +0.01]

p, allowing for regions0.096standard error 0.073 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.014across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Freedom of expression · index (0-1)link with income +0.36 · moderate

Refugees originating · per 100,000 peoplelink with income -0.49 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.198	0.011	166
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.468	2.1e-10	166
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.145	0.063	166
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.343	6.4e-6	166

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 166 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.053 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.168 (without CAF) to -0.101 (without AFG). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: AFG (+0.044).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	21	-0.40
Europe & Central Asia	47	-0.03
Latin America & Caribbean	23	-0.19
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	21	-0.29
Sub-Saharan Africa	46	-0.05

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	56	-0.27
Middle third	55	-0.12
Richest third	55	-0.15

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	98	-0.13
Muslims	47	-0.30

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	25	-0.15
Never a European colony	21	-0.29
Spain	19	-0.03
United Kingdom	49	-0.29

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.155 after dropping 27 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 35years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

The link shows up within countries over time (r = -0.126) but mostly disappears in year-to-year changes (r = -0.049). That points to slow trends particular to each country, not the two measures moving together from year to year.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.145for comparison

Within countries-0.155each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.126q = 0.048 · 172 countries

Year-on-year changes-0.049q = 0.242

5,571 country-years (one country in one year), 172 countries, 1990–2024, about 32 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 49% for Freedom of expression, 15% for Refugees originating. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): -0.126. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The data

	index (0-1)	per 100,000 people	Years
Denmark DNK	0.98	0.268	2025, 2024
Ireland IRL	0.97	1.29	2025, 2024
Estonia EST	0.969	9.26	2025, 2024
Belgium BEL	0.969	0.792	2025, 2024
Switzerland CHE	0.967	0.056	2025, 2024
France FRA	0.959	0.209	2025, 2024
Luxembourg LUX	0.957	0.743	2025, 2024
Norway NOR	0.953	0.395	2025, 2024
Czechia CZE	0.947	9.85	2025, 2024
Sweden SWE	0.946	0.924	2025, 2024
Finland FIN	0.946	0.089	2025, 2024
Korea, Rep. KOR	0.933	0.275	2025, 2024
Canada CAN	0.933	0.778	2025, 2024
Latvia LVA	0.932	9.56	2025, 2024
Uruguay URY	0.931	3.87	2025, 2024

Coppedge, M. et al., V-Dem Dataset, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project
UNHCR Refugee Data Finder; rate per population from Our World in Data

Sources

Freedom of expression

Freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

Media censorship, harassment of journalists, and freedom of academic and cultural expression. A part of the electoral democracy index.

Refugees originating

Refugees originating from the country, per 100,000 people

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

People recognised as refugees abroad, compared with the population of the country they left. It is zero for most of the world and in the thousands for a dozen countries at war. So it is put on a log scale (which squeezes very large values together) wherever it is used for adjusting, and its links lean on those few countries. The "leave one out" check shows by how much. It has a "better" direction and sits under governance. But it is an outcome of governance, not a measure of it, so it is kept out of the governance score.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2024–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Freedom of expression and Refugees originating

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Freedom of expression changes Refugees originating, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.